This is a symbolic post recognising that this whole doping episode has created a pretty bad mess.

HOWEVER I am now going to focus on the future, on clean and honest sports cycling. I am putting my confidence into the sport that the current and future generations of cyclists will learn from the mistakes others have made so he sport can grow and be attractive and compelling for the right reasons.

One of the great things about cycling is the great competitive lifespan that riders have. Having said that Cadel is one of the oldest riders to win the tour, it would be remarkable for him to do it again. Froome, eight years his junior looked amazing this year. He will be very interesting to watch in '13.

RobertFrith wrote:One of the great things about cycling is the great competitive lifespan that riders have. Having said that Cadel is one of the oldest riders to win the tour, it would be remarkable for him to do it again. Froome, eight years his junior looked amazing this year. He will be very interesting to watch in '13.

Yup. Really looking fwd to contradict groomed this year. Cadel? I don't think so. Wiggins? God no I could not stand another boring tour.

This post may get deleated from mods as it is opening another can of worms... but i agree with what alot of people have said about last years TDF be boaring veiwing and how Sky totally shut down the tour. Will it come out in a few years that Team Sky were on some performance hancing?

AUbicycles wrote:This is a symbolic post recognising that this whole doping episode has created a pretty bad mess.

HOWEVER I am now going to focus on the future, on clean and honest sports cycling. I am putting my confidence into the sport that the current and future generations of cyclists will learn from the mistakes others have made so he sport can grow and be attractive and compelling for the right reasons.

Regardless of all the doping troubles, it's still a great sport - the one I'm happy to encourage people to get involved in. And regardless of how much I might say "oh I'm not going to watch professional cycling", I still do.

Whilst I admire the sentiment, my concern is that it is a little to reminiscent of 1999. To pick one example from the New York Times

Samuel Abt wrote:Will His Comeback Be an Omen for the Race?: Tour Finds Renewal In Armstrong's StoryPublished: July 5, 1999

CHALLANS, France— Two days into the 86th Tour de France, the jury is still out on whether it has retained its popularity with a public weary of doping scandals, but there was no doubt Sunday that the victory of Lance Armstrong in the opening prologue after his battle with cancer was exactly the symbol the race organizers wished for.

Happy? Jean-Marie Leblanc, the Tour's director, was asked before the start Sunday of the first of 20 daily stages. He flashed a rare smile in the last year of turmoil and replied: "Yes — for me, for the Tour and for Lance above all. This is the Tour of renewal, of a return to the top level, and look at him: He incarnates that."

sogood wrote:I want to see Cadel, Froom and Contador battle it out. Any less would be boring.

Agreed. From what Wiggo has said, Froome may be let off the leash as Sky team captain. Next years race probably won't be won in the time trials, given that the Queen stage is located after the second time trial. they could have saved everyone a lot of hassle this year and just run a TT instead, since that's all the race turned out to be.

Two ascents of Huez!! Bring it on. Doper or not, Contador is a beautiful climber and if we get the same sort of battles up the mountains that we had in 2009, I'll be happy (provided that Channel 9 don't get the coverage).

Cycling is a beautiful sport to me - whether competing, training, just mucking around, or watching. I like to believe that the 'new generation' coming through are clean, and I don't care if that makes me naive or even delusional. I just love it - and I'm not gonna let some bullying psychopath, who ran the most effective doping prgram I;ve ever heard of, ruin that for me...

Tiz a sad time for the sport that I love so much and have many many good memories of and all of my best mates have come from this sport. I personally hope, that the powers that be will, be fair dinkum about trying to eradicate drugs.

It does sadden me when I read blokes saying, it is boring too watch the likes of TDF because of the domination of this or that team. You still have to admire the the effort that it takes for all the riders (even the bloody cheats) that compete in this and events like it because it is a huge effort to go out and compete at 100% or close to it every day. By not watching and supporting these races you are stick it to the blokes that are clean and trying to overcome adversity and to me that's not far to them.

Foo

I don't suffer fools easily and so long as you have done your best,you should have no regrets.Goal 6000km

I was reading road bike review while this site was down. I see they have created "the dopers forum" as a sub forum. Keeps it all in one place and easier to take time out from. I thought it a good idea.

Nice sentiment AUBicycles but I think we need change at the top of the UCI before we see real change. There needs to be a disconnect between the enforcement of doping bans and the UCI.

I do think cycling is doing more than just about any sport to stamp out doping, but I still can't trust the leadership of the UCI. My opinion is that the UCI has been dragged along to introduce the more effective testing regime we see now.

That said, I will be watching races next year, I do think the peleton is much cleaner now and I'm amazed that we're not (yet?) seeing anyone ask the bleedingly obvious question: if this was going on in cycling, what was going on in a heap of other sports (athletics springs to mind)?

AUbicycles wrote:HOWEVER I am now going to focus on the future, on clean and honest sports cycling. I am putting my confidence into the sport that the current and future generations of cyclists will learn from the mistakes others have made so he sport can grow and be attractive and compelling for the right reasons.

What this whole sorry saga has done, was to expose the fact that doping within professional cycling had reached a stage that I can only call “organised crime”. With several key players organising to provide this “service” to any cyclist or cycling team that felt the need to be a dominant force in professional cycling.

This network has hopefully been eliminated as a result of the LA expose’ and should leave any cyclist wanting to go down the PED path to their own devices, and in the process should make it more difficult for them to remain undetected without such insider knowledge.

At the same time I find it difficult to believe that team organisers, and other team members would not become aware that one of their own was engaging in the use of some form of PED’s. Therefore if PED use was to be completely eradicated, it would require some form of hefty penalty to be levelled against the whole of the team and their management, if one of their number was detected using PED’s.

This would result in a far more stringent effort to eliminated PED’s from cycling than would be possible by just the efforts of the Authorities and their detection program on it’s own.

From what I have read it seems to me that to remove the current administrators of the UCI would take a lot more evidence than appears to exist that they actively protected some riders and teams using PED’s.

Therefore it requires a change of system in such a manner as to make the UCI’s role less able to interfere with any positive swab enquiries.

It may even take the setting up of a separate Authority to solely handle swabbing of riders, the conducting of enquiries into positive swabs, and the setting of penalties to riders and teams.

The problem will be to find a sufficient universally accepted argument for doing so, as well as the will and of course the finance, without any real implicating evidence that this role should be taken away from the UCI.

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